Perplexity Launches $200 Monthly 'Max' Subscription, Joining the Trend of Premium AI Plans

Perplexity launches a $200 monthly subscription plan | TechCrunch

Perplexity is launching a $200-per-month subscription plan for its power users, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday. The plan, Perplexity Max, offers unlimited access to the startup's spreadsheet and report generation tool, Labs, as well as early access to new features, including Perplexity's forthcoming AI-powered browser, Comet. Max subscribers will also get priority access to any Perplexity services using the latest frontier models, such as OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4. With the launch of Max, Perplexity became the latest AI provider to offer a hyper-premium subscription tier to capitalize on its power users. OpenAI was the first to do so with its $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro subscription, but Google, Anthropic, and Cursor have followed suit in recent months. Perplexity now offers a variety of subscription plans. Alongside the $200-a-month Max plan, Perplexity offers a consumer Pro plan for $20-a-month, as well as an Enterprise Pro plan that costs $40-a-month per person. The startup says it will eventually offer a hyper-premium Max plan for Enterprise customers as well. In 2024, Perplexity generated roughly $34 million in revenue largely driven by subscriptions to its $20-a-month Pro plan, but still burned about $65 million in cash, according to financials seen by The Information. Most of Perplexity's cash burn reportedly comes down to heavy spending on cloud servers and buying access to AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Perplexity's business seems to have grown since last year -- it reportedly had an ARR of $80 million in January. However, the startup needs to generate significantly more revenue to justify its valuation. In May, Perplexity held late stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation. It's unclear if that round officially closed. But Perplexity's competition in the AI search market is intensifying. In recent months, Google has heavily pushed AI mode, its own AI-powered search product which bears a striking resemblance to Perplexity's app, in front of its users. OpenAI has also integrated search more deeply into ChatGPT in recent months, and has reportedly considered launching a browser of its own. One key to Perplexity's success may be its ability to work with AI providers, which it relies on for AI models, while simultaneously beating them in the AI search market. The added revenue from Perplexity Max subscribers could bolster the startup's ability to compete in the space.

Perplexity Max Is the Latest $200 Per Month AI Subscription

Claude, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and now Perplexity all have $200 a month or more priced subscriptions to access the best AI features. Perplexity Max is the name of the latest subscription, and it'll give you early access to in-development features from the search orientated AI company. The $200 subscription plans have become a hot battleground for AI makers since the introduction of ChatGPT's option toward the end of 2024. At the time, many were surprised by the high subscription price, but now it appears many AI platforms believe top-end subscriptions will do well. Anthropic brought in Claude Max in April, before Google AI Ultra launched for Gemini in May. That Google package costs even more than its rivals at $249.99 a month, which is currently the most expensive consumer pricing from any of these companies. For Perplexity, the Max subscription will get you unlimited usage of the company's Labs feature. This is Perplexity's tool to help you use the company's models for things like designing applications, presentations, spreadsheets, and more. You'll also get early access to the company's upcoming features. For example, Perplexity specifically highlights how subscribers will get access to the company's new web browser before many others. The brand has been beta testing its Comet browser for a couple of weeks. Perplexity says, "Comet is our new browser built from the ground up to be a powerful thought partner for everything you do on the web." Other benefits include priority for support issues, meaning you can jump to the front of the queue compared to those on $20 a month subscriptions. It'll also allow you to use other advanced models within Perplexity with access to OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4. Perplexity says this new tier is designed for professionals such as business strategists, academic researchers, and content creators who want extensive research tools. This isn't designed for businesses as the brand offers Enterprise subscriptions separately. You can access Perplexity Max now on the company's website or through the iOS app.

Perplexity joins Anthropic and OpenAI in offering a $200 per month subscription

Perplexity Max comes with early access to new features, priority support and unlimited Labs usage. You can add Perplexity to the growing list of AI companies offering $200+ per month subscription plans to users who want unlimited access to their most advanced products and tools. As of today, Perplexity Max is available on iOS and the web. The subscription comes with unlimited monthly usage of Labs, the agentic creation tool Perplexity released this past May. People can use Labs to generate spreadsheets, presentations, web applications and more. Perplexity is also promising early access to new features, including Comet, a new web browser the company claims will be a "powerful thought partner for everything you do on the web." The company adds Max subscribers will receive priority customer support, as well as access to top frontier models from partners like Anthropic and OpenAI. Perplexity will continue to offer its existing Pro plan, which remains $20 per month. Admittedly, the company is courting a small demographic with the new subscription, noting it's primarily designed for content designers, business strategists and academic research.

The rise of $200/pm AI plans -- why Perplexity, ChatGPT and Gemini are all going up

AI systems aren't cheap to run. Between the huge amount of training, the servers to keep them going, and the teams made up of the best brains in computing, the money has to come from somewhere. Originally, that cash seemed to be coming from investing, as the push for AI development received rounds and rounds of funding. Now, the costs are turning to you, the user of the tools. Along with their lower-priced base models, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have all revealed top-of-the-line plans, costing hundreds of dollars a month. Now, Perplexity has joined in too, revealing its Perplexity Max plan with a monthly price tag of $200. Seemingly designed for the power users of Perplexity, this offers an unlimited version of the plan. Most notably, users get unrestricted access to Labs. This is Perplexity's latest selling point. Labs is a tool described as similar to having a whole team complete tasks for you. It can code, write, research, and assemble its findings in one place. Where Labs stands out compared to other similar tools is the time it puts in. Perplexity states that it can take 10 minutes, which feels like a lifetime in today's AI world. However, that time allows the tool to complete incredibly detailed research, providing full reports, graphs, and apps for you to look through. The Max plan also gets you early access to any new tools or features from Perplexity and advanced model options. You also get priority support if anything goes wrong. Perplexity Max, like its expensive competitors, has a clear demographic. It's the people with money to burn and no time to wait for long load times and more credits to come back in. For the average person, you just don't need to spend $200 a month on any AI plan. Sure, it's nice having the latest features as they come out and not having to worry about the number of credits you have left, but unless you're using these tools all day every day, it seems excessive. This, however, does seem to be becoming the norm. When OpenAI launched its $200 ChatGPT Pro plan, the response from many was along the lines of "Who on Earth is going to pay that?"... seemingly a lot of people. While it seemed excessive at first, other companies quickly followed suit. In fact, along with pretty much every chatbot you've used having a plan around this price, image and video generators, AI research tools, and even AI tools have quickly added similar plans. Right now, you're not missing out on much by not going for one of these plans. However, like most industries, AI is quickly falling behind a paywall. Yes, free plans still exist, but to make these top-of-the-line plans more tempting, they need to stand out. Free versions, and even the lower-end paid subscriptions, are seeing more restrictions put in place. Less credits and slower load times become more common, and, with the best plans offering the most energy-consuming features, those willing to pay $200 a month or more getting priority in a queue will slow the process for those paying less.

Perplexity adds a Max tier just as expensive as its rivals

Credit: Thomas Fuller / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Perplexity has added another subscription tier, one that the company calls its "most powerful." And it's got a price tag to match. Announced by the Nvidia- and Jeff Bezos-backed company in a Wednesday blog post, Perplexity Max is the new premium offering for the AI search engine. An upgrade for the existing Perplexity Pro tier, Max is now available on iOS and web app, coming soon to Android. As well as everything included in Pro, Max includes unlimited use of Labs (the AI tool that can generate projects like reports, presentations, and simple web apps in about 10 minutes), early access to new features like the upcoming Comet agentic search browser, access to advanced AI models like Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 and OpenAI o3-pro and "priority support" for these models. Reader, it's not cheap. Perplexity Max costs $200 per month or $2,000 a year; the tier down, Perplexity Pro, costs $20 per month or $200 per year. It's the same monthly price as the top tier of OpenAI's offering, ChatGPT Pro; in comparison, the most expensive tier of Google's AI, Gemini, is Google AI Ultra, which costs $249.99 per month. The company says Perplexity Max is for "professionals...content creators...business strategists....and academic researchers." Users can upgrade their subscription at Settings > Account > Subscription > Upgrade Plan. Perplexity has been making more than few headlines of late, with the BBC threatening legal action over allegedly unauthorised content use and reports that Apple may be looking to acquire Perplexity.

Perplexity AI launches new 'Max' subscription priced at $200/month - SiliconANGLE

Perplexity AI launches new 'Max' subscription priced at $200/month Artificial intelligence search firm Perplexity AI Inc. is matching its industry rivals with the launch of a new $200-per-month subscription plan for power users, it said in a blog post today. Billed as the company's "most powerful subscription tier yet", the Perplexity Max plan provides unlimited access to its new spreadsheet and report generation tool Labs, and users will also be the first to get to play with new upcoming tools, such as its AI-powered browser Comet, set to launch in the coming months. Of course, Max subscribers will also get priority access in terms of standard web searches, as well as new features powered by new frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. Perplexity becomes the latest AI company to offer a more expensive, $200-per-month subscription tier, following in the footsteps of Open and its ChatGPT Pro subscription. Since then, Google LLC, Anthropic and Anysphere Inc.'s coding app Cursor have also released their own subscriptions in the same price category. The company plans to launch an even more expensive subscription "Enterprise version of Max" at some point in the near future, giving customers unlimited Labs queries, but it isn't clear exactly when that will happen. There are cheaper offerings available, with the consumer-focused Pro plan starting at $20 per month, and the Enterprise Pro plan that costs $40 per month per user. According to Perplexity, that latter offering is still the best plan for companies that require team management, internal knowledge base integrations and enhanced security features. There's also a free plan for those who don't mind limitations on the number of searches they can perform. With seemingly every AI company venturing to launch higher cost subscriptions, it underscores the reality that most are still struggling to turn a profit due to the ridiculously expensive costs associated with training and running AI models in production. In Perplexity's case, it received around $34 million in annual revenue in 2024, largely from subscriptions, while burning through around $65 million per month on cloud servers and access to OpenAI's and Anthropic's application programming interfaces. As such, it's little wonder that Perplexity is keen to test the waters and see if people are willing to spend more on its services. The company does at least appear to be growing its revenue. In January, it reported that it had reached an annual recurring revenue of around $80 million. But that's still far short of what it needs to become profitable and justify its recently proposed valuation of $14 billion - a number that was thrown around in May when reported emerged Perplexity is holding discussions with investors over a $500 million funding round. To date, there has been no confirmation of that round. No doubt though, Perplexity's prospective investors will be concerned about the intensifying competition it faces in AI search. Google, the king of internet search, has been pushing its AI Mode search tool aggressively in recent months, and it bears a striking resemblance to Perplexity's own application. Meanwhile, OpenAI has talked up the search capabilities of ChatGPT, and is also said to be considering launching its own browser, just like Perplexity is. Perplexity faces a difficult task, for it doesn't develop any of its own AI models, and must therefore rely on using its competitors' models to compete against them in AI search.

Perplexity unveils $200 Max subscription

Perplexity launched a new $200 monthly subscription plan, Perplexity Max, on Tuesday, according to a company blog post, targeting power users with enhanced features and early access to upcoming tools. The Perplexity Max plan provides unlimited access to the company's spreadsheet and report generation tool, Labs. Subscribers also receive early access to new features, including Perplexity's forthcoming AI-powered browser, Comet. Furthermore, Max subscribers gain priority access to any Perplexity services that utilize the latest frontier AI models, specifically citing OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4. This introduction of Max positions Perplexity as the latest AI provider to offer a hyper-premium subscription tier, a strategy aimed at capitalizing on its power users. OpenAI previously initiated this trend with its $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro subscription. Following OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Cursor have also introduced similar high-tier offerings in recent months. Perplexity now offers a tiered subscription structure; in addition to the $200-per-month Max plan, a consumer Pro plan is available for $20 a month, and an Enterprise Pro plan costs $40 a month per person. The company has indicated plans to eventually offer a hyper-premium Max plan specifically for Enterprise customers. In 2024, Perplexity generated approximately $34 million in revenue, primarily from subscriptions to its $20-a-month Pro plan. However, financial records viewed by The Information indicate that the company incurred a cash burn of about $65 million during the same period. The majority of Perplexity's cash burn is reportedly attributable to significant expenditures on cloud servers and the acquisition of access to AI models from providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Perplexity's business appears to have grown since last year, with reported annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of $80 million in January. The necessity for Perplexity to generate substantially more revenue is evident, particularly to justify its valuation. In May, Perplexity was reportedly engaged in late-stage discussions to raise $500 million, which would value the company at $14 billion. It remains unconfirmed whether that funding round has officially concluded. Concurrently, competition within the AI search market is intensifying. Google has recently increased its promotion of AI Mode, an AI-powered search product that resembles Perplexity's application. OpenAI has also integrated search capabilities more deeply into ChatGPT and has reportedly considered launching its own browser.

Perplexity Announces Its Most Expensive Subscription Plan With These Benefits

The Max subscription offers unlimited access to Perplexity Labs Perplexity introduced its most expensive subscription tier on Tuesday. Dubbed Perplexity Max, the new plan is aimed at the platform's heavy users and costs $200 (roughly Rs. 17,000) a month. To entice users to purchase the subscription, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm is also offering early access to new features, priority access to services that utilise third-party models, and higher rate limits. While the new subscription tier has arrived, the existing Perplexity Pro and the enterprise-focused Enterprise Pro tiers remain unchanged. In a blog post, the AI startup announced the new subscription tier and highlighted the benefits it comes with. Interestingly, with Perplexity Max, the company has now joined the ranks of OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, which have also introduced their $200 plans in recent months. This hyper-premium subscription model is becoming increasingly popular among Silicon Valley AI companies, and even smaller players such as Cursor have started offering similar subscriptions. With Perplexity's new plan, subscribers will get unlimited access to Perplexity Labs, the company's new feature that lets users generate reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and web apps. It is currently only available to paid subscribers, and Pro users can access it with rate limits. Differences between Perplexity Pro and Perplexity Max subscriptions Photo Credit: Perplexity The company also plans to release new features and products to this group of subscribers. Highlighting one of the immediate benefits, Perplexity said it plans to provide Max users with early access to the AI-native Comet browser, which was first teased in February. Additionally, subscribers will also get access to "more premium data sources and benefits from leading brands." Further, Perplexity Max users will also get access to frontier AI models such as OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4, and those users who want to use these flagship models for specific projects will also get priority support. Perplexity Max is available on the web and iOS starting today. New users can subscribe to it today, and existing subscribers can upgrade their plans. Notably, the company also highlighted that it is planning to launch an enterprise version of Max with unlimited Labs queries in the future.

Perplexity Launches $200-a-Month Subscription Tier Promising 'Limitless AI Productivity' | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The new subscription plan includes all the features of the $20-a-month or $200-a-year Perplexity Pro and adds unlimited access to artificial intelligence (AI) models in Perplexity Research and Labs, unlimited queries to its Perplexity Labs productivity tool, early access to new products and features, and priority support, according to a Perplexity help center page. Perplexity Max is now available on web app and iOS, and will soon be available for Android and desktop apps, according to the page. An Enterprise version of Max will be added "in the near future," the company said in a Wednesday (July 2) blog post. "Perplexity Max is our most advanced subscription tier yet, built for those who demand limitless AI productivity and immediate access to the newest products and features from Perplexity," the post said. The post said the new tier is designed for content creators and writers, business strategists, academic researchers and professionals who need unlimited access to analysis tools. "We still think that same trajectory is possible even now, especially with all the kind of distribution partnerships we are trying to seek and the browser that we're working on," Srinivas said. Perplexity was once a scrappy startup in the shadow of OpenAI and Google but is now gaining traction in the generative AI race, PYMNTS reported in June. The company has made a string of strategic alliances and is aggressively expanding its footprint across both enterprise and consumer markets. Darren Kimura, president and CEO of AI Squared, told PYMNTS in June that Perplexity positions itself as "a real-time answer engine to provide concise, cited responses." "This emphasis on provenance can appeal to users who are seeking verifiable information, such as researchers and executives," Kimura said.